I'm at w00tstock right now, and I haven't even seen the show, but I thought it would be fun to write a post in advance so anyone who watched The Big Bang Theory tonight would have a place to talk about it. If everything goes according to plan, this should post right as the episode is finishing o...

I have no idea what the title of this post has to do with the content of this post. In fact, I think there's no relation at all, other than the fact that I wrote them both. But when your brain compels you to quote Was (not Was), it's best to just do what it says, and slip in a Simpsons reference...

I don't think you should blame yourself. Your line (and others') individually are funny. They're the types of things I'd use in a Dragon*Con TV spot. But the video as a whole has the "see, autistic kids are special too!" feel, which is similar to your cool kids comment I suppose.

I've gotten a ton of criticism from people about the I Am a Geek video that launched yesterday, and I feel the need to respond to it. After watching the video yesterday, I was impressed by the production values, and I thought it was really awesome that it was just one small part of a larger proj...

I realize I'm late to the party, but having not heard anything about this "movement" before reading Wil's blog entry and then having watched the video, I can honestly say "What the **** is that ****?". Seriously, it needs a "The more you know" at the end of it. Total and complete crap designed to exploit "celebrity" to sell products.

I've gotten a ton of criticism from people about the I Am a Geek video that launched yesterday, and I feel the need to respond to it. After watching the video yesterday, I was impressed by the production values, and I thought it was really awesome that it was just one small part of a larger proj...

Actually the #1 FAQ for these podcasts should be how to find them. If you search Wizard's site, it's a giant mess and maybe you're lucky to find 1 or 2. There's no cohesive archive like there was for the first set of podcasts. Can you get them to do something like that with your star power, Wil? I had to use a combination of searching your blog and wget to download them. Not everyone <3 ITunes.

It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that I announce the release of the final D&D podcast in season two: "Here we go, folks – the final episode in our second series of podcasts with Acquisitions Inc. How will it end? The necromancer has the party on the ropes… can they hold him off? Or wi...

I had (thankfully?) forgotten about the teenage Picard episode.
But think about it. Have a pimple? No problem, use the transporter! Have cancer? No problem, transporter! Have to take a really large dump? Transporter!

Last weekend, I started a 4E campaign for my son Nolan and his friends. The plan is to take them through the entire Keep on the Shadowfell module, and then probably into Thunderspire Labyrinth, with possible detours into various level-appropriate Delves, or something from Monte Cook's awesome ne...

Last weekend, I started a 4E campaign for my son Nolan and his friends. The plan is to take them through the entire Keep on the Shadowfell module, and then probably into Thunderspire Labyrinth, with possible detours into various level-appropriate Delves, or something from Monte Cook's awesome ne...

Yes, and it's worse than that. They've clearly established that it stores someone's pattern in storage. Given this, there's no reason to believe you couldn't just start randomly cloning people (this was pretty much established as canon in the two Riker episodes).
SO ... if that's the case, every morning you report to the transporter, go through it and then if you happen to die, they just reassemble you, tell you what happened, and you're just down a day.
Of course, if you add in some extra easily considered technology, you could also effectively never age. If we take as a given that aging is caused by DNA decay over time, just have it reassemble you with fresh DNA.
They never really did any of this in Star Trek because they have the luxury of TV writers, but in a RPG, your PCs will take every advantage they can.

Last weekend, I started a 4E campaign for my son Nolan and his friends. The plan is to take them through the entire Keep on the Shadowfell module, and then probably into Thunderspire Labyrinth, with possible detours into various level-appropriate Delves, or something from Monte Cook's awesome ne...

Oh yeah, also, try to limit super-technology where you can.
Again in the Star Trek world, transporters are a huge problem. There's a reason GURPS rates them many TL higher than things like phasers and shields. Pretty much any problem can at some level be solved by a transporter. It can beam people into/out of any jam and can be used as a pretty ridiculously powerful weapon if you have a bunch of evil PC/NPCs.
In any event, in one game, we did the whole random "body swap" transporter thing. And, though I can't remember how it happened now, they were in some way interacting with Q. A different PC than above asked Q to fix the body swap thing. Q agreed if they'd agree to "never use the transporter again". Because people generally like to dick around with omnipotent beings for whatever reason, they agreed, knowing full well they were lying.
So, Q fixed the problem and in the process also removed all transporters from all Federation facilities in the galaxy. The PCs were pissed, and of course the NPCs eventually reinstalled transporters, but it was a good break from a super technology that can ruin any game.

Last weekend, I started a 4E campaign for my son Nolan and his friends. The plan is to take them through the entire Keep on the Shadowfell module, and then probably into Thunderspire Labyrinth, with possible detours into various level-appropriate Delves, or something from Monte Cook's awesome ne...

Always allow your PCs to do stupid things too. As an example, we were playing a Star Trek campaign at one point. In this campaign, they had just gotten into a firefight, incinerated the resultant bodies and then were looking to frame a 3rd party (yeah I know, it was a dark Star Trek world). As such, one of the of the PCs commed the ship's science department and said (and this is a quote) "Beam over 800 pounds of Betazoid DNA".
Now, what they MEANT to say was "Beam over enough DNA that makes it look like there were previously 800 pounds of Betazoids in the room".
So after a brief, "Um, are you sure, sir?" from the science officer on duty, which was confirmed...gallons upon gallons of a DNA liquid were beamed over into the room. To this day, this is remembered as one of the funniest moments of our RP together (go ahead, imagine it in your head, you'll see why).
Point of this post is that I agree with Wil, always say "Yes" to your PCs.

Last weekend, I started a 4E campaign for my son Nolan and his friends. The plan is to take them through the entire Keep on the Shadowfell module, and then probably into Thunderspire Labyrinth, with possible detours into various level-appropriate Delves, or something from Monte Cook's awesome ne...

I'm four days behind on work, so before I have time to share how awesome Sacramento was, I'll have to get caught up. Until then, I have a link that's going to make Gen Xers go nuts: The Top 10 Most Influential Educational Video Games from the 1980s. People who grew up playing video games are in...

I'm four days behind on work, so before I have time to share how awesome Sacramento was, I'll have to get caught up. Until then, I have a link that's going to make Gen Xers go nuts: The Top 10 Most Influential Educational Video Games from the 1980s. People who grew up playing video games are in...

I'm four days behind on work, so before I have time to share how awesome Sacramento was, I'll have to get caught up. Until then, I have a link that's going to make Gen Xers go nuts: The Top 10 Most Influential Educational Video Games from the 1980s. People who grew up playing video games are in...

Warning: This post contains poker content, and is probably boring to 96% of people the people who will it. Saturday night, Anne and I went out to Santa Monica for the All-in for Scleroderma poker tournament. About 100 people played, and I made the final table with one big blind left, finishing i...